Validators

Validators

The development of Namada started in 2022, back then it went by the codename of “M1”. After months of development, throughout summer and fall we launched a series of private testnets (opens in a new tab) with the help of a handful of early validators who believed in the vision of bringing asset agnostic shielding. The community at this stage was composed by the core developers at Heliax and the few validators (opens in a new tab) (7 team members from Heliax and 11 validators (opens in a new tab)) who joined and coordinated through the Validator Hangout on Element. The last private testnets ran until December 2022, the protocol version was v0.11.

In December 2022, the first public testnet (opens in a new tab) was launched with a few more validators joining forces (29 in total (opens in a new tab), with a few team-run nodes). Ever since, the core developers have published numerous protocol releases from v0.12.0, until the latest v0.23.1 and more than 13 testnets launches/upgrades. The number of validators grew a lot, a total of 253 validators (opens in a new tab) submitted their genesis keys for testnet 13.

Every testnet followed the same decentralized launch process as practice for mainnet, where a protocol version and a genesis proposal is published, and it is entirely up to the validators whether the network goes live or not.

Resources:

Want to become a validator?

Trusted SetupCommunity Builder Handbook